William Murray is a graduate of Adelphi University in New York and has studied language at Universita Perugia, Yale University and the Goethe Institute. He studied voice with Mme Karin Branzell in New York, Luigi Ricci and Giuseppe Bertelli in Italy and with Hertha Kalcher in Germany. He also worked entensively with Prof. Carl Orff in Munchen. He made his professional debut in Italy at the Teatro Spiimentale, Spolete in Segreto di Susanna as Conte Gil and in Germany at the Landestheater Detmold in Tosca as Scarpia.

He was awarded a Fullbright scholarship to study at the Rome Opera School in Rome, Italy, 1956-1957. He was awarded the honorary title of Kammersaenger by the Berlin Senate in January 1980 for exceptional artistic accomplishments.

At the Deutsche Oper, Berlin, he has sung in over twenty new productions, including Rigoletto, Don Carlos, La Gioconda, Don Giovanni, The Barber of Seville, and Die Meistersinger. He has sung with such conductors as Claudio Abbado, Lorin Maazel, Guiseppe Sinopoli, Heinrich Hollreiser, Christoph von Dohnanyi, and Christoph Eschenbach. It has been his fortune to work with many composers personallyon their works including Frances Burt, Isang Yun, Marcel Mihalovici, Stephen Burton, Luigi Dallopicola, Nicolas Nabakov, Hans Werner Henze and Carl Orff, the latter of whom mentions him in his autobiography.